Blog posts from Andy Callan

The 1990s seemed almost like a decade where Rolex had to stop to catch its breath. After the explosion in their popularity in the 80s, prefaced by the arrival of the first self-winding Daytona, and before the revolutionary charges waiting in the wings for the new millennium (among them, the second self-winding Daytona), it was […]

It is far from an exaggeration to say that no other manufacturer has done more to popularize the men’s wristwatch than Rolex. Founded in 1905 as Wilsdorf & Davis, their early breakthroughs of the Oyster case, the first workable waterproof housing, and the Perpetual movement, the first commercially-produced self-winding mechanism, offered never-before-seen levels of both […]

Although not as old as some traditional watchmakers, Rolex has been around for well over a century. Founded in 1905, it started life in a very different, far less enlightened time than today. It was a period when only men were permitted to hold any position of power, and it was men who were the […]

The 1980s was so transformative for Rolex you could almost divide the company’s history into ‘pre’ and ‘post’ the decade. Pre, their reputation had been slowly and patiently built up around a bevy of hardworking, stylish and extremely accurate tool watches—the kind of thing you could wear in just about any situation or during any […]